4 ms·

The entire global economy since the beginning of time is about consuming. What makes you think it would fall apart at all?

floatrock 11y ago
Exponential growth. There's a myth out there that we are unconstrained by physical resources. And it has largely been true "since the beginning of time". But that time is quickly coming to an end -- the next big generation shift will be the acceptance of a resource-constrained world imho. Look at meat consumption. It takes something like 10x as much energy to grow a calorie of meat as it does a calorie of vegetables. If the entire world (or even just the global middle class, if something like that exists) ate as much meat as the developed world, it would be an ecological catastrophe growing all that livestock, disposing of its waste, and fertilizing the grain needed to feed it. And guess what, as the populations of India and China are entering the middle class, they're adopting a taste for meat-heavy diets. Energy consumption per capita is a pretty good proxy for human development. Whether it's meat or our plastic lawn furniture that we consume from amazon, all of it takes energy to produce. In other words, consumption is another word for energy, and if even a sizable chunk of the world consumed as much as we do in the western world, it would require something like more energy than all proven oil reserves. Clearly that's not going to work. We can always hope for the deus ex machina ending and say that we'll find salvation in technological progress (whether it's an efficient way to store solar or figuring out fusion or an FTL drive top open up new worlds), but that requires a dangerous amount of hope. It's also the path of inaction -- wait for someone else to deliver salvation. More realistically, I think consumption is starting to hit physical resource constraints and is inflecting towards the top of the S-curve. The entire global economy since the beginning of time may have been about consuming, but that doesn't mean the party can continue.
- mozumder 11y ago
  There is no limit to consumption or available resources.
  - majewsky 11y ago
    There may be no upper bound on the absolute amount of available resources, but there is still a limit on how fast you can expand. Consider the following maximal example: If all of Earth's resources are exhausted (whatever that means, I don't rely on any exact definition), we need to head outwards into space. Because our expansion is limited by the speed of light, we can at most cover a distance r(t) = c * t and thus a volume of space V(t) = (c * t)^3 where t is the time spent travelling through space. The amount of available resources (assuming an even distribution of resources on the scale of the universe) is proportional to V, and thus to t^3. Cubic growth is much much much much less than exponential growth. In fact, the exponential function can be shown to grow faster than any power function.
jcoffland 11y ago
Isn't it already happening. If you put a population of flies in a closed container, even with an unlimited food supply, their population will grow and grow until it hits a peak and collapases. We are smarter than flies but to think we are not also constrained by nature is folly?
- hueving 11y ago
  The only reason the fly colony would collapse is if it ran out of a resource. No point in giving them an unlimited food supply because it's a resource like any other.
  - sp332 11y ago
    That's exactly the point. Sooner or later, human consumption is going to hit a wall.
    - mozumder 11y ago
      Why would that happen? Where is the actual limit to anything? If we run out of land, we take the sea. If we run out of sea, we take space. And so on.
      - gnaritas 11y ago
        > If we run out of land, we take the sea. If we run out of sea, we take space. And so on. This answer precludes the very real possibility that the necessary technology advances to "take the sea" or "go into space" don't come in time to be useful. Any plan that includes "things that haven't been invented yet" isn't a real plan, it's wishful thinking.
  - KannO 11y ago
    Humans are more complex than flies and social atmosphere would need to be healthy relative to dramatic population sizes. John B. Calhorn's mouse utopia experiments give some indication of complexity in large communities beyond food resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experime... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM There was no shortage of food or water or nesting material. There were no predators. The only adversity was the limit on space. Initially the population grew rapidly, doubling every 55 days. The population reached 620 by day 315, after which the population growth dropped markedly. The last surviving birth was on day 600. This period between day 315 and day 600 saw a breakdown in social structure and in normal social behavior. Among the aberrations in behavior were the following: expulsion of young before weaning was complete, wounding of young, increase in homosexual behavior, inability of dominant males to maintain the defense of their territory and females, aggressive behavior of females, passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were not defended against.[2] After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed “the beautiful ones.” Breeding never resumed and behavior patterns were permanently changed.

floatrock 11y ago

Exponential growth. There's a myth out there that we are unconstrained by physical resources. And it has largely been true "since the beginning of time". But that time is quickly coming to an end -- the next big generation shift will be the acceptance of a resource-constrained world imho. Look at meat consumption. It takes something like 10x as much energy to grow a calorie of meat as it does a calorie of vegetables. If the entire world (or even just the global middle class, if something like that exists) ate as much meat as the developed world, it would be an ecological catastrophe growing all that livestock, disposing of its waste, and fertilizing the grain needed to feed it. And guess what, as the populations of India and China are entering the middle class, they're adopting a taste for meat-heavy diets. Energy consumption per capita is a pretty good proxy for human development. Whether it's meat or our plastic lawn furniture that we consume from amazon, all of it takes energy to produce. In other words, consumption is another word for energy, and if even a sizable chunk of the world consumed as much as we do in the western world, it would require something like more energy than all proven oil reserves. Clearly that's not going to work. We can always hope for the deus ex machina ending and say that we'll find salvation in technological progress (whether it's an efficient way to store solar or figuring out fusion or an FTL drive top open up new worlds), but that requires a dangerous amount of hope. It's also the path of inaction -- wait for someone else to deliver salvation. More realistically, I think consumption is starting to hit physical resource constraints and is inflecting towards the top of the S-curve. The entire global economy since the beginning of time may have been about consuming, but that doesn't mean the party can continue.

mozumder 11y ago
There is no limit to consumption or available resources.
- majewsky 11y ago
  There may be no upper bound on the absolute amount of available resources, but there is still a limit on how fast you can expand. Consider the following maximal example: If all of Earth's resources are exhausted (whatever that means, I don't rely on any exact definition), we need to head outwards into space. Because our expansion is limited by the speed of light, we can at most cover a distance r(t) = c * t and thus a volume of space V(t) = (c * t)^3 where t is the time spent travelling through space. The amount of available resources (assuming an even distribution of resources on the scale of the universe) is proportional to V, and thus to t^3. Cubic growth is much much much much less than exponential growth. In fact, the exponential function can be shown to grow faster than any power function.

jcoffland 11y ago

Isn't it already happening. If you put a population of flies in a closed container, even with an unlimited food supply, their population will grow and grow until it hits a peak and collapases. We are smarter than flies but to think we are not also constrained by nature is folly?

hueving 11y ago
The only reason the fly colony would collapse is if it ran out of a resource. No point in giving them an unlimited food supply because it's a resource like any other.
- sp332 11y ago
  That's exactly the point. Sooner or later, human consumption is going to hit a wall.
  - mozumder 11y ago
    Why would that happen? Where is the actual limit to anything? If we run out of land, we take the sea. If we run out of sea, we take space. And so on.
    - gnaritas 11y ago
      > If we run out of land, we take the sea. If we run out of sea, we take space. And so on. This answer precludes the very real possibility that the necessary technology advances to "take the sea" or "go into space" don't come in time to be useful. Any plan that includes "things that haven't been invented yet" isn't a real plan, it's wishful thinking.
- KannO 11y ago
  Humans are more complex than flies and social atmosphere would need to be healthy relative to dramatic population sizes. John B. Calhorn's mouse utopia experiments give some indication of complexity in large communities beyond food resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experime... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM There was no shortage of food or water or nesting material. There were no predators. The only adversity was the limit on space. Initially the population grew rapidly, doubling every 55 days. The population reached 620 by day 315, after which the population growth dropped markedly. The last surviving birth was on day 600. This period between day 315 and day 600 saw a breakdown in social structure and in normal social behavior. Among the aberrations in behavior were the following: expulsion of young before weaning was complete, wounding of young, increase in homosexual behavior, inability of dominant males to maintain the defense of their territory and females, aggressive behavior of females, passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were not defended against.[2] After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed “the beautiful ones.” Breeding never resumed and behavior patterns were permanently changed.